A Winter Story: Feast of Lights by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Merry Christmas, dear readers! Today's Christmas story is very special indeed. Anne Elisabeth Stengl entered a story inspired by the illustration, and I have a surprise for you all. It is an original tale of Goldstone Wood!!! Yes, I'm pretty sure I just heard all you Goldstone Wood Imps scream in delight. Journey into the Wood and learn to hope once more!

FEAST OF LIGHTS

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

Once upon a time this had been a night of hope. Once upon a time this had been a night of magic, of possibilities.

Once upon a time this was a night when Cora had unfastened the shutters barring her window, cracked them open, allowing the breath of winter to whisper against her face, freezing her nose and cheeks, freezing the very tears upon her lashes so that her eyes were ringed in Faerie crystals. She would gaze out through that crack, up into the vaults of heaven, watching the moon and the stars in their dance. She would watch as the sky along the horizon hinted at dawn in shades of the sleeping rose. Then, so suddenly that it seemed he could not wait a moment longer, the Lordly Sun would spring up over the hills, over the forests, throwing wide his golden arms as though to catch all of her world in a great, warming embrace. And for a space of mortal time the Lordly Sun would share the heavens with the Lady Moon.

Once upon a time, on that icy winter dawn, Cora believed she heard the Songs of the Spheres proclaiming their promise across the world as they did every year on this day of days. The day of the Feast of Lights.

“It is the most solemn of all promises,” her mother had explained to her when she was but a tiny child. “The most solemn to be made between the Realms Beyond and our own mortal world. And the sun and the moon sing it together always. But today we celebrate it, and we sing of it ourselves.”

Every year on this special day, Cora and her family would clothe themselves in thick garments and crown themselves with wreathes of white winterberries, which seemed like small clusters of stars to her young eyes. So they would march through the snow, meeting others as they went. And they would come at last to the great House on the edge of their lord’s domain. On the day of the Feast of Lights the doors of the House were always flung wide, east and west, to receive the Sphere Songs. And the lord himself would order a great fire built up in the center of the House, the smoke rising in dark spirals through an opening in the rafters and roof. All his tenants and serfs were welcome to join him, ringing the fire, filling the House. And the lord himself would lead them in song.

“Beyond the Final Water falling,

The Songs of Spheres recalling,

As we wait in expectation for the promise unfulfilled

Let our hope renew.”

On that day of days, on the Feast of Lights, even a small tenant farmer’s child could believe.

She could believe there was more to life beyond the dirt-bound farm. She could believe there was more than toil and hardship and struggle, more than sweat and cold and hunger. She could believe there were worlds beyond her world, and a mighty Prince of all Worlds who loved her and who loved all whom she loved. A Prince who, as the holy men proclaimed, would return to the mortal world one day and prove his love once and for all.

Children find it easy to believe so many foolish things.

Once upon a time was not so long ago. Only a year before, Cora had been a child still. Only a year before, she had cracked her shutter as she always did on the eve of the Feast of Lights. She had watched the sunrise, told herself she heard the Spheres singing. And come morning, she had marched with her family through the snow drifts and raised her voice along with all the lord’s men, women, and children around the fire.

She had met Marco’s gaze through the flames.

Quiet Marco. Strong Marco. Marco who never spoke to her, but who always touched his forehead so respectfully when she carried sacks of hard cakes and pails of water to the working men in the lord’s fields. Marco who, on that day only a year before, had made a promise of his own to her with his eyes.

And through all the frozen march back to her father’s cottage, Cora had felt only warmth and happiness, and her faith had soared to the heavens above.

But a year can hold forever in its arms.

Cora did not open her shutters this night, did not seek to gaze upon the stars. She sat before her fire, and there was only her old mother for company. Father and brother, both were gone. Gone to a mad king’s wars. Gone to fight men of their own blood, to die. Father, brother . . .

Marco.

“Here, my child,” said her mother, holding up a wreath of white winterberries she had been weaving. Mother still clung to the ways she had always practiced. She sang the songs. She lit the tallow candles. She would, Cora did not doubt, march to the great House tomorrow and join her voice with those of the other widows in honor of the Feast of Lights. She would sing for the longed-for promise.

“Try this on your head,” her mother said. “See if it fits right.”

Cora gazed across their humble hearth, meeting those tired, sorrowful eyes she knew so well. Eyes that, despite everything, still clung to hope.

Cora stood, her hand extended, accepting the wreath. Then she turned and dropped it into the heart of the fire.

The next moment she was at the door, stepping out into the bitter night. Dawn was far away, and the air was so cold it struck her to the bone. She heard her mother calling after her, but she paid no heed. She drew the door shut and stood in darkness that was nearly perfect, for the sky was overcast. There would be no rosy sunrise this Feast Day. There would be no singing and no promise that was never, never fulfilled.

Cora wrapped her arms about herself, feeling the very depths of winter stillness. The cow did not low in its shed, the sheep did not stir. Even the shaggy dog, burrowed deep under a layer of snow for warmth, raised no alarm as Cora stepped out into the farmyard, her shadow following her like a winter wraith. The humble farm buildings stood around her, indistinct as the mounds of ancient barrows.

All slept. All waited. The hush of death was upon the world.

Then, suddenly, she heard a tiny sound: a pitiful mewling cry.

Cora turned to the sound, slowly, for her blood was too cold in her veins to allow for any swift movement. She turned and saw a small mound of snow moving. Another sad cry filled the stillness of night, and Cora took three paces and knelt to see what she might find. Of all things, it was a kitten. A tiny, wet, struggling kitten, its voice nearly faded from this life.

“Look at you,” Cora said, her breath curling the air before her face as she spoke. “You’ve tried so hard, haven’t you? You’ve tried to live, tried to believe the promise that life is worth living.”

The kitten stared up at her. Cora could see no more than the outline of its shape in the darkness of that night. But she could feel its gaze. “Meeeek!” it said.

“There’s no use, my dear,” said Cora, her voice very gentle. “No matter what you do. The world is too cold. The world is too dark. You cannot escape it, not in the end. You might as well die here.”

“Meeek!” said the kitten and took another determined step, its tiny white-mittened paw sinking through the crust of snow all the way up to its chin. With great difficulty it pulled itself up and took a leap, moving toward Cora as though toward the very hope of heaven.

“I cannot help you,” Cora said, though she remained where she knelt. “Your own mother could not help you, for where is she now? Where are your brothers and sisters? They’re lost in the dark. They’re dead and they’re gone. You’re alone, tiny one, and the night is heavy. There will be no songs in the morning.”

“Meeeek!” With a final burst the kitten reached out and caught Cora’s bent knee with its tiny claws. It clung to her, gazing up at her with such fierceness and such trust, a strange combination.

Cora sighed. Her heart was like a stone in her breast.

“Very well,” she said, and wrapped her numb fingers around the little body, feeling each rib and the fluttering of a heart. “If you insist.” She put the kitten up under her chin, and the ice on its fur bit like knives before melting and running down her throat. Staggering, she turned back to the farmhouse, only to see her mother standing in the doorway, watching her.

“What have you there, Cora child?” Mother asked as Cora stepped into the hearth light.

“A lost soul,” Cora whispered so softly that her mother did not hear. She knelt before the fire, making a nest of her skirts, and held the kitten there. The kitten said, “Meeek!” again, and its bright gold eyes caught the firelight and held it, as though capturing warmth down into its very soul. At first it sat very still in Cora’s lap, staring into the fire. Then, quite suddenly, it began to purr. The rumble filled the small hovel and filled Cora’s ears.

Cora stared down at the kitten as though she didn’t know what she saw. It began to knead her leg with its white paws, claws catching in the rough fabric of her skirt. It blinked and purred and kneaded, for all the world as though it hadn’t been on the very brink of death but minutes before, out in the enormous, frozen world.

“Shall I give it some milk?” said Mother. “It’s gone off a bit since morning.”

“I doubt the kitten will mind,” Cora said with a shrug. And so a saucer was brought forth, and the kitten fell to with a will, lapping up the day-old milk as though it were an offering fit for gods. Its purr never stopped. The moment it had finished, it hopped back into Cora’s skirts and went back to kneading her leg.

“Ouch,” said Cora, for the claws pierced the fabric.

“A dear little thing,” Mother said, taking a seat near to hand and beginning to work on a new wreath to replace the one Cora had burned. She did not speak of that wreath’s destruction. She knew her daughter’s pain, though they never spoke of it. It was her own pain as well, a pain that had gone so deep that it pierced her heart and left it broken. But for her, the heartbreak of loss was an agony, not a poison.

Not so for Cora. The wounds Cora suffered in spirit had turned gangrenous. Words of comfort, no matter how sincere, only made the girl lash out in fury. So her mother held her peace and loved her quietly. They did not speak of their loss. They did not speak the names of those they loved and longed for. And the winter nights were full of raging, weeping silences.

Tonight, however, the kitten’s purr dominated the silence.

 “It is a blessing you found her,” Mother murmured as she worked. “She’d not have survived a night so cold. Not a wee one like her.”

Cora said nothing.

“It is a blessing you found her, dearest,” Mother said again. She finished a wreath to fit her own head and then began to make another. All the while she watched her daughter sit at the fire, her face turned just enough away that Mother could not see her expression.

“A blessing.” Cora mouthed the words without sound, and they were cold on her lips.

The kitten curled up in a furry ball, its toes still stretching and curling with comfort and ease, as though recent sufferings were already long forgotten. The firelight shone on its fur, which was gold and russet with red bands down the shoulders and haunches. Such a small, such a delicate creature. And yet how much life was contained in so tiny a frame.

“A blessing,” Cora whispered again. But her heart was a stone, and the warmth in which the kitten basked could not touch her.

Mother finished the second wreath and sat a moment, looking at the extra berries she had gathered. She’d brought in the same amount she did every year, though there was no reason for it this year. Then, with a sigh that had grown all too familiar these days, she continued her task and made two more wreaths, a little larger than the first two. She wove them with expert care, then rose from her chair and, moving stiffly from age and heartache, she crossed the room to the door and hung the wreaths on two stout pegs where once her husband and her son had hung their hats. This done, she turned back to the fire, brushing winterberry leaves from her skirt.

“Will you come to bed now, Cora?”

The barest shake of a head was her only response.

“Rake the coals when you’re done, and don’t linger too late. You don’t want to catch your death.”

Cora did not move at all but sat with her head bowed over the kitten in her lap. She listened, though, to the sounds of her mother undressing, kneeling, offering humble peasant-prayers. She heard the creak of ropes, the rustle of straw. And, not too many minutes later, she heard the heavy breathing of sleep.

The kitten stirred at these sounds but did not fully wake. Instead it stretched and rolled, exposing its white belly, stretching one forepaw, displaying pale pink pads. The tiny toes twitched and curled and then were still as the kitten rested in deep, trusting repose.

 “A blessing,” Cora whispered a third time. But she could not make herself believe it. “What blessing can there be, kitten-cat, in what I have done for you? Soon you must wake and face this life again. A life where all you love are taken from you. Where there is no help for your hurts. Where there is nothing but promises.”

Never fulfillment.

The fire died down. Red embers glowed, the burning remains of dragon hearts, one by one extinguishing. Heavy clouds crawled across the surface of the world, blocking out all sight of the stars so that one could believe that this night was endless. That the Feast of Lights would never come again. The cold was all-encompassing. The cold sank down into the marrow of the very soul and clung there, never to thaw, never to let go. Winter ruled this world.

“Perhaps,” Cora whispered, her words curling into the air like the lost dreams of lonely ghosts, “there was never a promise to begin with.”

Frost crept in across the hard floor, grasping at Cora’s fingers, her nose, crawling up her arms. Still she sat where she was, listening to the heavy breathing of her sleeping mother, listening to the silence of the sky above, where the stars did not sing. But the kitten remained in her lap, a warm bundle of peace that was so strange in the deepening night.

Then, as suddenly as though a awakened by resounding bells, though Cora heard nothing but echoing silence, the kitten twitched, twisted, and sat up. It yawned, displaying all its white teeth, and rubbed a paw down the bridge of its nose.

It looked up at Cora, and its eyes shone with their own golden light, bright as two candles in the dark.

They were not the eyes of a kitten at all. They were the eyes of something very old. Something very young.

Cora stared. She must be dreaming. The winter night must have caught her to its bosom, and now amazing fancies danced through her head. She must be dreaming or raving to see such brilliance in the darkness.

The kitten leaped from her lap. Cora tried to stop it, suddenly desperate not to lose hold of that little life. But her limbs were too numb from sitting on the cold cottage floor, and she could not move quickly enough. She turned though and watched the kitten bound across the room to the straw mattress where Cora slept. It jumped up, its small body sinking into the mattress, and for a moment Cora could not see it. Then she saw the shadow of its body stretching up along the wall, one white paw reaching up.

Reaching up to bat at the shuttered window.

Cora, moving with pain as blood flowed back into her stiffened legs, rose and staggered across the room. The kitten batted at the shutter then, hearing Cora’s approach, turned to look over its shoulder, bright eyes blazing.

“Meeek!” it said.

“What do you want?” Cora’s voice came out in a hoarse cough, for her throat had frozen.

“Meeek!” said the kitten.

“It’s too cold outside,” Cora said, kneeling on the mattress beside the kitten, which fell in a furry tumble against her knees before springing up and batting at the window again. “You don’t want me to open the shutters.”

The kitten turned and stared right at her.

“Yes, I do,” it said.

It was a dream. Of course it was a dream. Only in dreams would it be so natural to hear a voice like that fall from a white, whiskery muzzle. Only in dreams would Cora hear and accept what she heard without fear, without question. She gazed into that small, sweet face.

Then she put her hands up to the shutter and cracked it open.

If the cottage room had been cold before, now a blast of ice as though from the fringes of the frozen Netherworld blew through, making Cora’s eyes water, making the tears freeze on her cheeks. But she braced herself against it and opened the shutter wide.

Just as she did so, the heavy dark clouds broke. Only for a moment. And through the break she glimpsed the vaults of heaven and the shining stars above.

The kitten leapt into the windowsill. It crouched, its little haunches wiggling as it gauged the distance to the snowy drift below.

“Don’t!” Cora said, and put out her hand. Too late.

The kitten jumped, vanishing into the snow. Cora gasped and leaned out over the sill. She heard her mother moving in the bed behind her, heard a sleep-muffled voice saying, “Cora, child? What are you doing?”

The snow drift moved. A bright golden head emerged.

“Meeek!” said the kitten. “Meeek!”

But in Cora’s ears the sound seemed to shift, to transform. Very distinctly she heard the kitten say, “Hurry! Hurry!”

Cora did not stop to think. She gathered up her skirts and her cloak. Though she was cold to the bone, she felt a sudden warmth bursting in her heart, an energy that flooded through her extremities, filling her with urgency. She pushed the shutter out as far as it would go and climbed into the window sill.

“Cora!” her mother cried.

She dropped into the snow bank. The outer crust broke with a crunch, and she sank into the soft, wet snow beneath. Icy chunks filled her shoes, slid down the sleeves of her garment, clung to her cloak. But she didn’t care. The kitten had struggled out and stood before her, a golden lamp of light and life in the pre-dawn darkness.

“Hurry!” it said again, turned tail, and ran.

Cora was up in a moment. The warm urging in her heart was quickening now, and she did not mind the cold or the dampness. She began to run, chasing the kitten. Her feet broke through the crusty surface snow, and she sank up to her calves with each step. The kitten, by contrast, seemed to have found wings for its feet, for it sped across the surface of the snow where only a few hours before Cora had found it struggling. She did not question the strangeness of this, nor did she slow her pursuit. Her ears were full of that otherworldly voice, singing, “Hurry! Hurry, hurry!”

“Cora, wait!” she heard her mother calling.

But she could not wait. Not now. Dawn was coming, and the Feast of Lights was near.

Across the farmland the kitten led her, over the snow-bound fields of the lord’s great estates. And though Cora floundered at times, somehow she never lost sight of that little golden being, even in the dark. As though by some magic she felt pulled along in the kitten’s wake. She could not lose sight of it. Not now.

Suddenly the Wood loomed before her.

Cora never entered the Wood. No one did. It was old and it was silent, and to penetrate its borders was a sacrilege not even the lord of the land dared commit. No peasant girl would dream of crossing into the shadowy depths of those tall, dark trees.

The kitten, however, knew no such qualms. It sprang up to a stone bridge, which spanned a shallow ditch on the very edge of the wood. Cora hurried after but skidded to a halt and almost fell over as she came to the foot of the bridge.

The bridge was piled with snow. Across the ditch rose the Wood, but over the bridge . . . over the bridge, Cora saw something else. Something she could not quite explain.

The kitten stood in the middle of the bridge, one white paw curled, red tail held high. It looked up at Cora, smiling as only a cat can smile.

Then suddenly it wasn’t a kitten anymore. It was a child, a golden-headed child clad in garments of scarlet and russet. She wore a wreath in her hair, like the winterberry wreaths Cora’s mother wove. But these were holly berries, and they were bright as drops of blood against the pale hair. Her face was so young, the very essence of youth. Her eyes glowed like candles in the darkness.

She held out a hand to Cora. “Will you come?” she asked. “Will you see?”

“What will I see?” Cora asked, breathing hard both from her run and from a sudden wave of fear.

“I cannot tell you,” the child said. “It is beyond words. But know this, gentle mortal: If you see what I will show you, you will never be the same.”

The night was not quite so heavy. The sky was no longer black but indigo, and the clouds were beginning to break apart. Dawn was swiftly approaching, the rising of the Lordly Sun.

“Come,” said the child, her hand still extended. “Come and see.”

Cora reached out and placed her frozen hand into the child’s warm one. She resisted the pull, just for one moment. Then she allowed herself to be led across the bridge. A strange sensation rippled over her body as she crossed, and she closed her eyes, though the sensation was not unpleasant.

“You’re over now,” said the child. “Look.”

Cora obeyed.

She found that she stood upon the bank of a frozen lake, a lake that she had not been able to see when she stood on the far side of the bridge. Across the lake, rising up so suddenly as to seem beyond possibility, stood a mountain, a vast, vertiginous mountain, so great, so tall, that it must reach all the way to the heavens. Winter clung to its slopes, but Cora saw lights, hundreds and thousands of lights, and knew that many beings had gathered there throughout the night, waiting for the rising of the sun.

Above it all, suspended in an enormous, luminous glory such as Cora had never seen in her own world, hung the Lady Moon.

“Hymlumé,” Cora whispered.

“Watch,” said the child.

The edges of the mountain shone. Golden light spilled out from around it as the sun, the Lordly Sun, rose up and up. One by one, the lights on the mountain slopes went out, or else perhaps they simply seemed to, for they were so faint compared to that growing glow. The air was cold, but Cora could not feel it, for her eyes were full of what she saw, and her heart was beating so fast that her blood rushed in her veins.

The Lordly Sun burst over the edge of the mountain. And he shared the sky with the Lady Moon.

Suddenly a great music burst forth, ringing out from the heavens, shattering the cold, shattering the stillness. The frozen lake beneath Cora’s feet rumbled with it. The trees at her back shook and shivered and danced with it. All of those gathered on the mountain raised their own voices in response, but they could not be heard above the singing.

The singing of the Sun, the Moon, and all the Starry Host.

And so Cora heard the Sphere Songs declaring the Feast of Lights. Declaring the Promise:

Beyond the Final Water falling

Our ageless Song recalling,

Though all around you is the emptiness of night,

I will return for you.

Beyond the tears of sorrow falling,

The times of pain and longing,

Let your heart be ever true to the promise I have made,

I will return for you.

Cora stood on that lake, holding hands with the golden child. And she herself was a child again, gazing up at the heavens. She heard the Spheres declaring the promise, and she believed.

She whispered her father’s name. She whispered her brother’s name. She whispered, “Marco,” though her voice could not be heard in the ringing of the Song. She spoke the names in sorrow, in pain. But she spoke them in hope as well. She knew that somehow, somewhere, they too heard this Song. The Song of the Feast of Lights.

The Sun and the Moon rose higher together, reaching out to each other. They were not the celestial spheres Cora had known in her own world, but mighty beings of light and might, dancing together across the sky, even as they and their star-children sang.

Then, suddenly, it was over.

A breathless hush, a hush of waiting, fell from the sky, down across the mountain, and at last upon Cora herself. She bowed her head, breathed deeply. The Song was still there in her heart.

The child tugged at her hand, and Cora looked down into the face so like a kitten’s. “Will you remember?” the child asked.

“I believe so,” Cora said. “Yes.”

“You must return now,” the child said. “Your mother is calling for you.”

Even as she spoke, Cora heard a distant voice crying out her name. How far away it seemed, though it could only be across the stone bridge.

“Will you sing for the Feast of Lights?” the child asked.

“I will sing,” Cora said.

“That is good.”

With a tug of the hand, the child and Cora turned back to the bridge. Cora saw her mother across it, a lantern in hand, frantically following a trail in the snow. Eager to calm her mother’s fears, Cora stepped forward onto the bridge and was halfway across before she paused. When she looked back, the frozen lake and the mountain were still there, though she knew they would be gone the moment she stepped from the bridge. The child, wrapped in her scarlet cloak, stood with her head tilted a little to one side, her eyes very round and wide.

“What is your name?” Cora asked.

The child blinked slowly, like a cat. “Megaren,” she said. “Megaren of Rudiobus.”

“Will I meet you again, Megaren?”

“Perhaps.” The child smiled. “Your lap is very warm, and I liked the milk well.”

With a twirl of her cloak, the child turned. Then there was no child anymore, but a golden kitten scampering across the lake, making with all speed for the mountain beyond.

So Cora stepped across the bridge, back into her own world.

The End 

Anne Elisabeth Stengl is the award-winning author of The Tales of Goldstone Wood, a world which you visited in this story. Learn more about her and her books at her blog!